More than Leads: A B2B Marketing Strategy

Leveraging Company Data for Sales Insights for a Recycling Company.

Innovative products, hard work and responsible leadership are crucial for the success of any company. But there is an additional piece that is difficult for many businesses: getting a product in front of the right people. Even if a business has all three of the above qualities, it’s difficult for a product to take off without buyers.

3 Rivers Plastics approached the B2B marketing experts at MHP/Team SI with a similar situation. A unique, cutting edge innovator in the world of highly-soiled plastic recycling, they can do what no other company can: store, process and deliver high quality recycled plastics from waste produced by food and beverage manufacturing plants. They approached the Agency for support in getting their foot in the door with busy F&B manufacturing decision makers (C levels and plant managers) while making it obvious that what they offer is completely unique and highly cost efficient.

Developing a B2B LinkedIn Strategy

After meeting to learn about the company’s products and challenges, our B2B marketing team put together a LinkedIn strategy to reach key decision makers. Using LinkedIn’s sponsored messaging tool, we quickly deployed a low-budget touchpoint directly to the inboxes of decision makers to “soften the beachhead” for 3RP’s sales team while helping them learn about the audience’s preferences.

A differentiating factor in this campaign was the decision to gauge the appetite of F&B decision makers for 3RPs offerings by utilizing interest-based CTAs rather than the typical strategy of asking for a meeting. Our research found this strategy to be 138% more effective.

Over the course of 42 days and with a budget of just $800, we sought to reach at least 500 new decision makers and earn an open rate above the B2B average of 15.2%. From there, we worked to get actionable insights for the 3 Rivers Plastics sales team to apply to their sales strategy.

Exceeding Expectations, Delivering Results

We kicked off the campaign and began to see insights immediately. Through weekly briefings, we updated the 3 Rivers Plastics sales team so they could tailor their efforts to campaign results.

At the end of the 42 days, our marketing efforts exceeded our initial campaign goals:

  • 708 Total Decision Makers Reached (41.6% higher than the goal)
  • 425 clicks to open, at a rate of 60.3% (299% increase above benchmark)
  • 1 lead conversion that was both Marketing AND Sales qualified
  • A definitive list of 25 companies whose decision makers actively engaged with the sponsored message more often than others

Anecdotally, 3 Rivers Plastics CEO told us, “I definitely believe this is working. [My Sales Team has] been receiving more engaged discussions and responses [during this campaign].”

Can a Similar Campaign Help Your Company?

Executing this campaign proved a few things for our B2B marketing team:

  1. Leads aren’t the end-all-be-all of new B2B Marketing Campaigns. Learnings are just as important, if not more. 
  2. It doesn’t take a large budget to earn actionable insights that can be leveraged into sales. 
  3. Strong Sales and Marketing alignment requires consistent, frequent communication from both teams, with the responsibilities of each party clearly defined. 
  4. The best kept secret of LinkedIn is the Trending Company list, which could be the secret weapon of your sales team. 

Over the past few years, our B2B marketing team has been researching the best strategies to help businesses reach key decision makers. Last year, we wrote about reaching the work-from-home C-Suite. We also discussed how the B2B customer journey has changed in recent years and how businesses should adapt.

If your business is interested in reaching key decision makers in your industry and gleaning insights for your sales team, reach out through the form below! Our B2B marketing experts would love to start a conversation with you.

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